I heard that Portland, Oregon, can be a pretty gloomy place – so you can imagine how it felt when I arrived in the middle of showers that did not stop throughout the entire day. It was a grim foreshadowing of what was to come during the next few days – fitting, perhaps, since I was there to take a look at Grimm.
If you haven’t heard of it, Grimm’s a TV series that’s a mix between crime and fantasy drama – a little like Buffy The Vampire Slayer meets the X-Files.
Other than the weather, I’d heard little about the city – definitely a lot less than San Francisco or San Diego. Turning to Google didn’t help as much as I hoped – Portland remained inscrutable and nothing seemed really set the city apart from others other than the magic of Portland’s famous Voodoo donuts. Oh, and the rain.
While my day in the rain was made much better with donuts and great coffee, Portland’s magic really came through on the second day. The weather cleared the very morning we were due on set, and so there we were, at the base camp of Grimm, where fairy tales come to life.
The stars of the show were all in attendance, and each of them shared their thoughts on the show – and what kind of fairytale creature they would love to play, where we had anything from a fairy-tale version of a pimp-daddy to a unicorn. It felt as if, like any good tale, Portland was opening up to me – carefully, slowly, and with a great twist in it.
Each episode in Grimm focuses on a separate tale from – you guessed it – the library of the Brothers Grimm (but also other assorted famous famous fairy-tales), which meant that the state of the set was in constant flux. This time the house of one of the characters, Munroe, was covered up to protect it from sawdust. Not that I minded – it definitely lent a very creepy atmosphere to the surroundings.
Our set visit ended with us watching a scene being filmed – which was something magical in its own right. It was all over too soon as we jumped back out of the rabbit hole into the real world.
After Portland, I made my way to Vancouver to check out season 2 of Fairly Legal – but that is a story for another day.
For more about Grimm, watch out for more of it in our regular paper – soon!
